


Daybreak

by ficsandcatsandficsandcats



Category: The Witcher (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-02
Updated: 2020-05-02
Packaged: 2021-03-02 05:15:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 766
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23959783
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ficsandcatsandficsandcats/pseuds/ficsandcatsandficsandcats
Summary: Reader Request: A prompt to tug at the heartstrings, perhaps? One day, Jaskier starts singing/writing a song and the reader says, "oh thank God. You dont sing when you're upset and you've been so quiet for months."
Relationships: Jaskier | Dandelion/Reader
Kudos: 17





	Daybreak

“What rhymes with awake?” 

You screw up your face and stretch, the question pulling you out of a dream you hate to leave. In it you and Jaskier were at a May Day festival. He was dancing with you and making you laugh and doing all of the things he’d done once upon a time. The worry that had weighed on you daily for the last three months resettled in your chest as you woke and took in your surroundings. The soft linen sheets, the perfectly squished up pillow, the window that looked out onto the tree showing the orange hues of sunrise barely brushing against the sky. 

“And before you say forsake, it doesn’t suit the tone. Also I used that rhyme a few lines back.”

You turn over in bed and Jaskier is sitting next to you. He’s thrown on a dark blue undershirt with buttons undone so low you wonder why he bothers to put on anything at all but this isn’t what captures your attention. Jaskier is scribbling in his journal and when he glances over and catches your eye he gives you a small smile. It’s a smile he’s given you a thousand times before in passing, so quick and commonplace it’s practically his default expression. At least it was before the incident with the dragon.

“What… are you doing?” you ask tentatively, sitting up, afraid you’re going to wake any moment and that this is just a new spin on the same dream you’ve been having for months.

“Well ostensibly I’m working on a song but I’m stuck on this damned – oh!” 

The quill is knocked out of his hand as you launch into him, pulling him into a hug that he returns clumsily, taken aback by the tears in your eyes and the way you keep looking at him like he’s just returned from a long, hard war. 

“What is it love?” he asks, gently brushing your hair out of your face and tucking it behind your ear.

“I just… I’m just so relieved. You don’t sing when you’re upset and you’ve been so quiet for months.”

Jaskier knew he’d been a bit more sullen than usual. He thought he’d been hiding it better than this and it made his heart ache to see how affected you were by something as simple as writing a song. He’d tried to put on a smile when he saw you. He still held you at night, though he was usually awake long after you’d dozed off, going over the years of friendship he’d lost and mentally scrutinizing every action to figure out why it hadn’t been enough. Why he hadn’t been enough. At some point the fog that settled in his brain became a new normal, such a natural part of his life he hardly remembered a time without it. 

He thought back to the day he’d returned from that last trip with Geralt. The way you didn’t say anything cross about Geralt, knowing it would only prompt him to defend the man he needed to be free to feel angry at, an instinct honed through years of friendship and loyalty. You listened and held his hand and then all of him, stroking his hair as he rested his head against your chest to listen to the soothing rhythm of your heartbeat. 

The fog lifting allowed him to see all of the little things that had barely penetrated his consciousness. The little vases of buttercups and marigolds and bright, happy flowers that began to pop up around the house, bringing a bit more color wherever possible. The way you made it a priority to give him a kiss once he woke and when he went to sleep. The way your compliments had shifted over time. Fewer about his appearance and more about other qualities left (according to you) all too often ignored. You’d praised his kindness when he made you tea just the way you liked it when you were sick. You’d thanked him for his thoughtfulness when he fluffed up your pillow before you set your head down on it at night. A phrase had been borne in the months adrift, whispered into his ear each night; “You’re wanted, you’re loved, you’re mine.”

Even when he hadn’t felt like himself, even on the days he couldn’t bring himself to look in the mirror, through every painful incarnation you had chosen him and loved him. He pulls you back to him, holding you so tightly it’s nearly bruising but you only burrow closer, holding each other in grateful silence as day breaks.


End file.
